Eileen Cohen Süssholz on Ceramics, Psychoanalysis, and Pop Goes the Weasel

Eileen Cohen Süssholz (born Johannesburg, 1972; lives in Antwerp) merges ceramics and painting through a psychoanalytic lens. Her exhibition "Pop goes the weasel" at Pedrami Gallery explores cultural clichés, taste, and the status of the art object. She returned to painting after a hiatus, focusing on the "object-nature" of pieces—surface qualities like gloss, which she links to newness, fashion magazines, screens, and Old Master varnishes. In her paintings, she uses resin and plexiglass to replicate ceramic glaze. Color is analyzed for its attention-grabbing properties, akin to flowers attracting insects, and its role in signage and graffiti. She incorporates second-hand frames to emphasize the objecthood of paintings, using airbrush techniques from ceramics. Her research draws on Freudian and Jungian theories: ceramics allow free association and "dreaming in daylight." She connects consumerism to Freud's libido, citing Jung's quote about vitamins replacing gods. Her work "Ritual intent" reproduces a bathroom shelf as a beauty shrine. Süssholz's childhood in South Africa, with limited access to European art, shaped her engagement with kitsch. She feels a nostalgia for past art, linking Hellenistic decadence to current narratives of Western decline. The show's title references an 18th-century nursery rhyme about pawning a coat for drink, symbolizing living on credit and addiction as escape.